The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year. But most Americans are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

DoctorZin

PS I have a daily ping list and a breaking news ping list. If you would like to receive alerts to these stories please let me know which list you would like to join.

Iran has pledged to give the United Nations nuclear watchdog crucial letters making official its acceptance of tougher nuclear inspections and a suspension of its controversial uranium enrichment program.

However, several diplomats say they are losing patience with Iran, which has yet to stop its enrichment activities three weeks after promising to do so.

The United States believes the activities are at the heart of a secret atomic weapons program.

"Next week, we will get the letter by Iran for conclusion of the Additional Protocol, which is a positive step," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed El Baradei said.

Mr El Baradei describes his meeting with the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rohani, as "very fruitful".

He says Iran has promised him a letter formally announcing the "suspension of all enrichment-related activities" next week.

Mr Rohani has declined to give a date for the suspension of activities.

"In the next week I will announce that," he said.

Last year, US President George W Bush branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq.

Iran denies it wants an atomic bomb and says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

This meeting comes days before Mr El Baradei delivers his latest report on inspections in Iran to diplomats in Vienna, a report the IAEA has said would detail more failures by Iran to report required information to the United Nations.

This report will be discussed at the November 20 meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Mr. Rowhani said he will announce next week exactly when Iran will begin suspending uranium enrichment. Iran had already agreed to make the concessions, but has yet to confirm the arrangments in writing to the IAEA.

Iran also filed a report late last month that it said was a full and complete account of its nuclear activities. Mr. ElBaradei is still sorting through the document and is set to file his own report as early as Monday.

The IAEA board of governors is to consider during a meeting later this month November 20, whether Iran is complying with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The U.S. State Department has said any decision by Iran to end cooperation on its nuclear program would be "gravely troubling."

An official from the National Iranian Oil Engineering and Development Company, Ali-Akbar Vahidi Al-Aqa, told the IRNA news agency that talks with the two firms were already underway -- confirming that Japan no longer has exclusive negotiating rights.

The official said Royal Dutch/Shell and Italy's ENI had also been invited to enter talks on the field, considered to be Iran's most important with estimated reserves of 26 billion barrels, but had both refused.

Tehran had offered preferential rights to a Japanese consortium during President Mohammad Khatami's visit to Japan in 2000.

Japan and Iran agreed in 2000 to start negotiations over the field, but Iranian officials warned that a period of exclusive signing privileges for the Japanese consortium expired at the end of June and other companies could now be considered.

Washington has been trying to persuade Tokyo to drop the investment due to concerns over Tehran's nuclear programme.

WASHINGTON : The US Central Intelligence Agency has warned that international inspections may not prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear weapons program because Tehran could be using legitimate fuel production to cover up its weapons programme.

The assessment, contained in a report to Congress made public over the weekend, coincided with Iran's formal assurances to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it will accept surprise UN inspections of its nuclear facilities and suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

The two promises had been requested by the IAEA ahead of its November 20 meeting to assess Iran's compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But the CIA said that a secret nuclear facility at Natanz whose existence had been disclosed by members of the Iranian opposition in August 2002 could be cause for concern.

About 160 new centrifuges for enriching uranium have subsequently been discovered at that complex, located between the cities of Isfahan and Kashan in central Iran, according to US and UN officials.

"Even with intrusive IAEA safeguards inspections at Natanz, there is a serious risk that Iran could use its enrichment technology in covert activities," warned the leading US intelligence agency.

It added that the uranium centrifuges discovered at Natanz were "of specific proliferation concern" because they are capable of enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

"Although Iran claims that its nascent enrichment plant is to produce fuel for the Russian-assisted construction projects at Bushehr and other possible future power reactors, we remain concerned that Iran is developing enrichment technology to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons under the cover of legitimate fuel cycle activities," the CIA said.

The report insisted that Iran appears to be trying to produce both known materials for making nuclear warheads - highly enriched uranium and low burn-up plutonium.

According to the CIA, commercial satellite imagery showed that Iran was trying to bury the Natanz enrichment facility in the ground, presumably to hide it or harden it against military attack.

"We also suspect that Tehran is interested in acquiring fissile material and technology from foreign suppliers to support its overall nuclear weapons programme," the report said. - AFP

Rarely does the timing for the annual Festival of Films from Iran, which starts Friday at the Museum of Fine Arts and runs through Dec. 14, get any better.

On Dec. 10, the ceremony for this year's Nobel Peace Prize will be held in Oslo, and Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian who has spent her life peeling back the curtain on domestic abuse, will be the first Muslin woman given the prize. The Nobel committee pulled few punches in its statement about the judge-turned-human rights activist: Ebadi has "displayed great personal courage as a lawyer defending individuals and groups who have fallen victim to a powerful political and legal system that is legitimized through an inhumane interpretation of Islam."

The monthlong MFA festival provides a vivid lead-up to the Nobel ceremony, bearing witness to the daily struggles in today's Iran through films made by equally courageous artists based in that country.

Central to the festival are riveting portraits of feminism. "Our Times," by 49-year-old filmmaker Rakhshan Bani Etemad, is a 2002 documentary about the 2001 presidential election in Iran. It follows a group of college girls -- including Bani Etemad's daughter -- who campaigned for a reformist candidate, and it focuses on one of the 48 female candidates in the 711-person field.

Bani Etemad is a leading filmmaker in Iran, and she'll be the recipient of the festival's annual ILEX Foundation Award for Excellence in Iranian Cinema. (She was scheduled to accept the award in person, but will be prevented by illness from attending. Her daughter, actress Baran Kosari, will be present.)

In addition to "Our Times," the festival is showing four of Etemad's other films: "Under the Skin of the City," a drama about a female factory worker; "The May Lady," about a divorced mother incorporating a new lover into her life; "Nargess," about a man caught between two women and trying to leave his criminal past; and her festival favorite from two years ago, "The Blue-Veiled," a sweet story about how affection between a farm worker and the owner of a plantation takes root despite family members' objections.

Like many of today's Iranian filmmakers, Bani Etemad came of age during the 1970s and began making feature films and documentaries in the late 1980s. She records the convolutions of living under post-Islamic revolution fundamentalism with pre-1979 sensibilities.

She is one of the featured artists in the documentary "Iranian Women Filmmakers," which plays here, too. This 2003 film by Hamid Khairolkin and Majid Khabazan addresses the question that nearly everyone asks after seeing even a handful of these films: How did all these filmmakers manage to make such damning work under the watchful eye of the government?

The answer, of course, is that not all do. The MFA reports that earlier this year, the Iranian government confiscated the negatives of "Silence Between Two Thoughts," which tells the story of a prison guard ordered to execute a young woman. Filmmaker Babak Payami, now living outside Iran, reportedly reconstructed the film from his computer files to create the video that will be screened here.

"Black Tape: A Tehran Diary," another underground film, is one of the roughest of the series but also one of the most haunting. Dizzying and often tortuous, it plays at times like a home movie and at others like a store security video catching a horrible crime in its periphery. Its subtitle is "The Videotape Fariborz Kambari Found in the Garbage," and director Kambari's construct is that a young Kurdish bride has begun recording her imprisoned life with her husband, a former military official.

At times the camcorder is tucked under her arm as she runs; at others it sits on a table overlooking rococo furniture and taking in just sound. Played by actress Shilan Rahmani, the young woman looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones and alternates between a synthetic serenity and a poignant feistiness. "All of you make me sick," she says from behind the camera to party guests who are complicit in her near-slavery. Things only get worse.

Lighter, quirky, and eminently likable is "Letters in the Wind," which follows new recruits in the Iranian military as they go through boot camp. These could be American boys: They strut to the whistles of the Colonel Bogey March, carry Adidas bags, and kvetch about smelly feet.

The central character, a young man with a Sean Penn squint, smuggles a Walkman into his barracks and listens to the murmurings of a woman whose call he has recorded. "Hello? You won't die. Talk please," says the soft voice, and the young soldier wiggles deeper into his bunk with a smile. First-time feature director Ali Reza Amini uses lovely imagery and shows how simple fantasies can soften harsh realities.

One of the most epic films this year is Tamineh Milani's "The Fifth Reaction." It opens with a group of friends at a restaurant talking about the ways they say "I love you" to their men. One of their husbands shows up with his secretary; an ugly argument ensues, and the wife breaks with him on the spot. Suddenly the women begin confessing the humiliations they bear at home. The focus shifts to one of them, a young widow whose father-in-law is intent on throwing her out of the house and keeping her away from her children. We end up in a bona fide road movie, as both women take off with the kids. There are flashes of humor as victories come in small, conditional ways.

Jafar Panahi, 43, has turned out movie after movie that has taken festival awards: His 1995 debut, "The White Balloon," which followed a 7-year-old girl intent on buying a goldfish to celebrate the first day of spring, won the Camera d'Or award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival; his 2000 "The Circle" captured the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

His new film is the engaging drama "Crimson Gold," and already it has snagged a jury prize at Cannes. It follows a grim man whose job delivering pizza to wealthy Iranians grinds him down until he snaps. Humiliation is at the story's core, and it is an emotion shared by the director himself. In a letter to the New York Film Festival last August, Panahi explained that he would not be attending the screening of his film because he didn't want to go through the "humiliating treatment" of being fingerprinted upon arrival because of his nationality.

"It's not just George Bush who subscribes to the idea that you are either with us or against us," Panahi wrote. "In my country, too, anyone slightly crossing any red lines is subject to the suspicion of the censors. . . . Here, they interrogate me because I am a socially conscious filmmaker. In America, they fingerprint me, and literally shackle me to kill my national pride, because I am an Iranian filmmaker. This is the kind of purgatory I, and many others like me, find ourselves in."

Iranian films speak where the filmmakers cannot, and portions of this MFA festival will travel for the first time in the event's 10 years. Selected films will move on to Washington, D.C.'s American Film Institute, New York City's Asia Society, and Houston's Museum of Fine Arts in the coming months.

Here's just one fact about Iran that justifies its designation by the State Department as the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Every year, Tehran holds a festival of terrorist groups from around the world to facilitate their making contacts and coordinating tactics and strategies. This isn't the only reason President Bush included Iran in the axis of evil, however. Iran has opposed every U.S.-backed peace initiative in the Middle East and has made a foreign policy of anti-Americanism ever since its seizure of American hostages from our embassy there in 1979. It has also founded or fostered some of the world's most heinous terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. To this day, it continues to offer safe haven to key al Qaeda operatives. As if all that weren't enough, Iran has been implicated in the bomb attacks on U.S. service personnel at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and, more recently, in the attacks on an American compound in Riyadh. Now, unsurprisingly, terrorists backed by Iran are making mischief in neighboring Iraq.

But that's not all. Thanks to an Iranian opposition group, we have learned that Iran, in breach of all its international agreements, has developed a nuclear-weapons facility disguised as a watch factory. Not only has it built centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium, but inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered actual traces of highly enriched uranium--something not required for power stations but awfully useful for bomb making. Iran's excuse was that this was the fault of the country that sold it the equipment. Who was that? Iran is unable to identify the source.

Lies. The list of grievances, improbably, continues. Iran is completing another uranium-conversion plant. It has acknowledged that it received 1.8 tons of natural uranium from China in 1991, much of which remains unaccounted for. And it is going ahead with development of its nuclear facility at Bushehr, which will be able to separate the plutonium essential for fissile materials.

It's one thing to work on building a nuclear device, another to deliver it on a target, and in this regard, Iran's capabilities are worrisome. Iran's new Shehab-3 missile has a range of over 800 miles and could reach anywhere in the Middle East and most of Europe.

The pretense that Iran is engaged in a peaceful nuclear energy program is preposterous. Why would a country that sits atop one of the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas spend billions of dollars to build nuclear power plants when they are so cost ineffective? Why would it go to such lengths to make nuclear fuel it could buy elsewhere, except to use for military purposes? Why all the lies?

Washington has looked to the IAEA to condemn Iran and trigger a U.N. Security Council resolution of condemnation and sanctions. To circumvent this, Iran did its deal with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany, whereby it signed up for a tougher inspection program and agreed to "suspend" the enrichment of uranium. The agreement was headlined as a major advance, but that's way premature. It is full of holes, for one thing. And it appears to impose no schedules or deadlines, as the chief of Iran's national security council glibly admitted. "We voluntarily chose to do it," Hassan Rowhani gloated, "which means it could last for one day or one year--it depends on us."

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran said Sunday it will temporarily halt its uranium enrichment program while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigates the country's nuclear activities.

Hamid Reza Asefi, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, told reporters that the uranium enrichment program will be put on hold within the next few days.

Inspectors with the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, are in Iran to assure the country is not operating a nuclear weapons program.

The United States has said Tehran is seeking to build such weapons, but Iran denied the accusation and said its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.

Asefi said his country, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), expects European countries with advanced nuclear technology to provide Iran with such technology once the IAEA determines there is no nuclear weapons program.

The IAEA's governing board is scheduled to meet Nov. 20 to hear from inspectors. A verdict on whether the IAEA is complying with its NPT obligations is expected sometime after.

This classic stall and shuck and jive pattern is all part of a continueing deliberate program of deception. This is exactly what Saddam was playing out in iraq. Now the decadent persian mullas see what lack of resolve on our part and the weak and impotent iaea can and is producing desired results for them. Our reluctance to force definitive action on them spells disaster for peace and stability in the middle east.

The Jewish Nation is the only ones with their heads in this game and is willing to put their diplomacy on the tip of a missile. Because they have a dog in this hunt and are not afraid to risk everything to maintain their freedom we should take a similiar view and quit dancing around doing the rope a dope with the devil. Israel cannot safely depend on America to do the right thing; we are more concerned with how it might look or how it night be perceived. As a result we lose all advantage to the enemy for not being committed to changing things that are necessary.

The Student Revolt has not been supported like it should have been and now we are reduced to dicey military options that we would have been able to avoid if we had acted when we knew we needed to. Indecision is a classic symptom of Politically Correct thinking. This continues to be this country's downfall and it does not change , no matter who resides in the Whitehouse!

We should lead by example and the Jewish Nation certainly has read all about Theodore Roosevelt; he understood the iron fist in a velvet glove and we should too. Now we find ourselves trying to whistle up courage in a darkening corner of this world. The U.S. State Department, heavy with socialist/marxist thinking and influence is the most dangerous policy making body in existence in the world today. It will destroy any and all who it comes up against just like it has done to our Country and is trying to do to The Jewish Nation. Their idiotic policies are so controlling and destined to produce EVIL in the world that nobody will be able to escape its socialist plan.

The country of iran is the lynch pin that divides peace from war in the battle of Terrorism in the middle east. Once we dry up the outsource locations for the real ENEMYS, russia & china we won't solve all the problems but at least we will finally know where to focus our attentions. You will still have to contend with PISS ANT non entities like North Korea,Cuba and and a few others. By doing so we may buy a little time to be able to regroup our forces instead of having them spread out all over the globe!

CAIRO : An Iraqi leader who maintains close relations with Iran said the United States and Tehran have resumed secret talks in Geneva on security issues and bilateral relations, a newspaper report said on Sunday.

Jalal Talabani, current head of the Iraqi Governing Council, told the pan-Arab Al Hayat in an interview in Baghdad that talks resumed a few weeks ago.

"As far as I know there are now talks in Switzerland between the Iranian and the US governments. We always are helpful messengers carrying positive aspects to both the Iranians and the Americans," Talabani said.

"Certainly, we wish that relations between America and Iran could be better, and I think this will be positively reflected on the situation in Iraq ," he said.

He did not elaborate.

Talabani said the resumption of the talks must have been approved by Iran 's hardline supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters, although he is known to oppose rebuilding close relations with the United States .

Iranian-US talks were last held in May in Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations.

"The U.S. State Department, heavy with socialist/marxist thinking and influence is the most dangerous policy making body in existence in the world today. It will destroy any and all who it comes up against just like it has done to our Country and is trying to do to The Jewish Nation. Their idiotic policies are so controlling and destined to produce EVIL in the world that nobody will be able to escape its socialist plan."

I don't think you'll find many here who are in love with the State Dept.; they've certainly mishandled Iran. HOWEVER, your statement "It will destroy any and all who it comes up against just like it has done to our Country...", is a bit over the top. Do you really think our Country has been Destroyed? I don't think things are THAT bad. And while they may have some "idiotic policies", "destined to produce EVIL in the world", is quite another thing. The State Dept. has always had more "socialist" types. Their function is diplomacy. I don't think Evil is the main objective, even if they do screw-up things. "...the most dangerous policy making body in existence in the world today" ? Gee, I don't think so, wink. The U.N. has them beat, for one.

Its like attacking a dam; at first it appears everything is ok; but a death blow eventually does its work. America has been successfully attacked by socialist TRAITORS and we will not see it for what has been done to us by stealth and subtrfuge and as a result the country like the Dam will eventually succumb because we have not seen or been able to stop the continued damage. Yeah I'm over the top to some degree but the fact remains vigilance has failed so far to identify the problem we all know exists!

Several demonstrators have been injured and tens of other arrested, in the last 2 days, following consecutive protest actions which turned into riots in the Tehran southern suburb of Rey and in the religious city of Ghom.

Protesters attacked public buildings and security patrols as the regime forces attacked brutaly the demonstrators in both actions. Slogans against the Islamic regime and its leaders were shouted while calling for free elections.

The security forces were able to smash the riots with the help of the Pasdaran Special Units sent to these two areas.

While in Rey, demonstrators intended to protest against the local officials corruption, Ghomis used a gathering of religious origin in order to show their rejection of the regime.

Isn't it great we have FR to help do this? The democrats are doing a pretty good job of shooting themselves in the foot. They're showing everyone who the socialists are. Of course, not everyone catches on right away, but the word is spreading. I think between more conservative radio and TV news/talk programs, and blogs and bulletin boards and FR (of course),"the problem" is being identified. Stick your finger in the dam, wink. All is not lost. America is waking up and "ever vigilant" may become a motto once again. Hang in there..........

A UC Berkeley lecturer held for nearly four months in an Iranian prison on espionage charges was released on Sunday and is prepared to fight a legal battle to clear his name, his friends and family members said.

Dariush Zahedi, 37, was freed on $250,000 bail paid by his family and is still subject to a criminal prosecution. He was arrested on July 10 while on an annual trip to visit relatives.

Although Zahedi, a vocal critic of the Iranian government, is now technically free to leave his native country, friends and family said Sunday that he intends to hire a lawyer and stay to face his accusers."That's his mindset,'' said Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor who spoke with Zahedi on Sunday. "He thinks that he's innocent and he needs to clean his record.

"I think Dr. Zahedi will be cleared. If the case of spying was really serious, no amount of bail would have gotten him released. They just wanted to keep his mouth shut.''

Authorities at the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not return calls seeking comment on Sunday.

Zahedi was arrested when he agreed to speak with a political freedom movement in Iran. His arrest came as student protests and international criticism of Iran's nuclear weapons program were placing increased pressure on the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Zahedi was jailed at Evin prison, north of Tehran, where Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian journalist, died in custody in July following her arrest for taking photos of student protests.

On Sunday, Zahedi was careful not to discuss details of his detention in several phone calls to relatives and friends for fear that Iranian authorities might be listening, according to those who spoke with him.

"He has been under pressure, all kinds of threats and so on,'' Amirahmadi said. "I personally cannot confirm whether he was tortured or not. I asked him how it was. He basically said it was suitable -- OK. He is doing quite well, to my surprise. His spirits are quite high.'' Amirahmadi said.

He knows of no trial date set in the case.

Zahedi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Lafayette, is the author of "The Iranian Revolution Then and Now: Indicators of Regime Instability." A graduate of UC Davis and the University of Southern California, he teaches Middle Eastern politics at UC and Santa Clara universities.

Officials at UC Berkeley could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Zahedi and Amirahmadi are active in the American Iranian Council, a nonpartisan nonprofit group devoted to improving U.S. relations with Iran. Amirahmadi is the founder and president and Zahedi is the West Coast director of operations for the group, whose honorary chairman is former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Zahedi's stepfather, who lives in the Bay Area and asked not to be named, got a call from Zahedi early Sunday morning just after his release.

Another relative, who had a brief conversation with Zahedi, said, "I just asked him how he was. I don't think he was comfortable talking on the phone. I asked him if he could come back here. He said he didn't know.''

Zahedi is staying in Tehran with his mother and brother, relatives said. He is reportedly reluctant to talk publicly about his arrest to avoid damaging his chances of winning in court.

His case has been closely watched by human rights organizations and the U.S. government, although a spokeswoman for the State Department said on Sunday she could not comment on Zahedi's release.

And his arrest appears to have intensified divisions within the Iranian government between reformists and fundamentalist clerics.

Amirahmadi said Iran's Ministry of Information, which first arrested Zahedi, ultimately cleared him of spying. But the country's hard-line Department of Justice then took over the case. Amirahmadi said Zahedi's release could signal that the Iranian government is looking for a face-saving way to drop the matter altogether.

"He is not a spy,'' the professor added. "But he is certainly a critic of the regime.''

In discussing what to do about Iran's nuclear weapons programs, a disproportionate amount of attention is being focused on getting Tehran to comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and to permit the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry out more comprehensive inspections of its nuclear facilities. Late last month, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain announced with great fanfare what they considered a hopeful sign: an Iranian promise to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for the Europeans' promise to help the regime obtain peaceful nuclear technology. But the reality is that even if Iran were to comply with the promises it made to the Europeans (a big if), it would have only a marginal impact in slowing Tehran's progress toward developing nuclear weapons. The problem lies in the fact that international community and the IAEA are too focused on Iran's covert nuclear program, and are giving insufficient attention to its potentially much more dangerous overt nuclear program. In an analysis paper, entitled "Iran: Breaking Out Without Quite Breaking the Rules?", the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) reaches this chilling conclusion about the radical Islamic regime's efforts to develop nuclear weapons: "Iran can come within weeks of acquiring a large arsenal of weapons without breaking the rules of the NPT or IAEA and perhaps do so even sooner than when it might get its first covert bomb." According to the NPEC (one of nation's leading research organizations on nuclear proliferation issues), "if Iran's overt program all stays on schedule, Tehran, in fact, could get a large arsenal of nuclear weapons  50 to 75 bombs by 2006." It could do this by operating its Russian-built light-water reactor (LWR) at Bushehr for 12-15 months. It could then chemically separate the plutonium from the spent fuel and convert it into metal. "Metal conversion and the chemical separation of the plutonium from the spent fuel might take an additional 12-16...weeks beyond the time Iran extracts the spent fuel from the LWR," the NPEC analysis observes. "Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, all of this is legal. It is also legal under the NPT for Iran to make as many implosion devices (sans fissile cores) as one might want and have them ready to receive metal plutonium cores. At this point, some time by or before 2006, Iran could break out of the NPT and have a large arsenal of weapons in a matter of weeks or days." By contrast, Tehran's efforts to use centrifuges to enrich natural uranium to weapons grade (a major focus of the IAEA's current inspections efforts) play a secondary role, functioning as a nuclear insurance policy: they could produce a much smaller number of atomic weapons for Iran 2-6 a year by the end of 2006, the NPEC concludes. The bottom line is that we may be much closer to an Iranian A-bomb (which could pose a tremendous danger to international peace and stability) than policy-makers and the public realize.

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